The recent activities of the CHP under the leadership of Özgür Özel have started to make the leftist public opinion ponder the question ‘Is Kılıçdaroğlu's intervention in the Baykal CHP coming to an end? We can list these activities as follows;
-publicly open discussions with the parties that make up the ‘Table of Six', insulting statements against the MPs elected from the Millet Alliance lists, and insults against Mr. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu for putting these MPs on the lists!
-Pretending that the National Alliance does not exist or actually ending it.
-Putting Önder Sav, the hard-line secularist symbol of the Baykal-era CHP, at the head of the congresses.i
In this sense, the CHP is the CHP of Deniz Baykal before Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu;
-Defending the headscarf ban and even trying to ban public officials from wearing headscarves in social life,
-Supporting regulations to prevent graduates of imam-hatip high schools from entering the departments they want in universities,
-Who did not want graduates of imam-hatip schools to enter military schools,
-Basically opposed to Koran courses,
-Limiting imam-hatip high schools to train imams,
-Proposing 8 years of education where primary and secondary school students study together,
-Who do not want the opening of imam-hatip middle schools,
-Objection of prayer rooms in schools,
-It was a party that did not approve of public servants going to Friday prayers.
Moreover, thinking that all these practices were “secularism”, he was playing politics by mistaking the politics of “Are you aware of the danger?” for leftism.
Mr. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu became the 7th president of the CHP at the CHP congress held on May 22, 2010. Since then, Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu step by step changed and transformed the CHP, equipping the party's showcase with cadres suitable for this structure, and transforming it from a strict secularist ideological structure that did not take into account the sociology of society to a center-left party that respects and respects freedom of religion and conscience.
The most important manifestation of this understanding of secularism that takes into account freedom of religion and conscience is the formation of the Millet Alliance with conservative parties; the nomination of a conservative candidate such as Ekrem İmamoğlu as the candidate for Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor and a nationalist candidate such as Mansur Yavaş as the candidate for Ankara Metropolitan Mayor, both of whom won consecutive elections and gave the CHP a leap forward; the fact that CHP politicians fulfill religious rituals or respect them even if they do not fulfill them; the routine celebrations of holy days, Friday prayers, holidays, etc. The prohibitionist mentality of the Baykalist CHP era has become a thing of the past, paving the way for the CHP to reconcile with Turkey's conservative-nationalist sociology.
After these transformations, the People's Alliance and the conservative intelligentsia did not use religious arguments in their discourse; in this sense, the old secularist CHP they were looking for is now a thing of the past, and a CHP that will fight against them on equal terms has emerged.
This CHP is the work of Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu!
The actions of Mr. Özgür Özel, who ignored the ‘Millet Alliance' after he was elected as the chairman, raises the question of whether the CHP, which respects freedom of religion and conscience and which Mr. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu transformed with great effort, will turn into a strict secularist CHP again!
We hope this concern does not materialize...